


shore leave

by drow



Series: watchers of caed nua [2]
Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:53:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21537775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drow/pseuds/drow
Summary: Oh fuck.
Relationships: Serafen/The Watcher
Series: watchers of caed nua [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1564753
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	shore leave

**Author's Note:**

> smut will be in the next chapter i'll change the rating when i post it!

**i.**

His captain is pretty, alright.

And it’s an interesting kind of pretty, too, because his captain’s face, and back, is littered with scars and his eyes never seem to smile, even though a corner of his lip is always pulled upwards, resembling a cruel smirk whenever he speaks, and his head is high, always, looking down at people (even though he's even shorter than Serafen).

Serafen doesn’t want commitment, and what excites him is that he thinks his captain doesn’t look for that, either. And so he approaches him one day, on the deck of the ship, sees his captain with that arrogant look on his face, sees him on the tip of his toes, watching the sea and he’s suddenly hit by an overbearing amount of affection but he wills it down quickly, ignores it.

He puts a hand on his captain’s back. Flinches when his captain does, too.

“Just me,” he says, softly.

His captain— _Percy_ , he said his name was, even though Serafen knows that’s not his real name. It’s the way he said it, he thinks, like he’s not used to it himself—turns to him, his back rigid under his palm, and he smirks, but he’s _trembling_.

“Cap,” Serafen continues, in that soft tone that he didn’t even know he could be capable of uttering, “Didn’t mean to scare you—”

“You didn’t,” Percy says, and puts a bit of a distance between them, and Serafen lets him, watching his captain as he watches him back and wants to laugh, a little, about how he thought about it all—him walking towards his captain, all confident and sexy like, asking about the humidity in his quarters and he can’t help it, he chuckles a little, and keeps chuckling, even as Percy trembles even more furiously until he leaves.

**ii.**

It’s just that. . . Serafen normally doesn’t care. He doesn’t, but he’s always been weak for a pretty face, for a pretty body, and when he wants, he _wants_ , and Percy is just beautiful, in a mesmerizing way.

And he’s still Percy, even after that embarrassing moment of theirs, deceptive to the end, full of secrets, mysterious, beautiful, _beautiful_. He wants to call him that, and he fears he won’t be able to stop his treacherous mouth, especially on drunken nights such as this one, because. _Well_. He’s drunk and he can’t even control his thoughts and gods-damn it all, he’s _horny_ , and he’s thinking about hair that looks like it’d be soft to the touch, about the most beautiful color of fur he’s ever seen in his sorry life.

He sees Percy, talking with Vela, sees him smiling genuinely for the first time in months and he thinks oh fuck oh _fuck_ —

“Serafen!” Eld Engrim shouts from the far side of the ship, “Get your furry ass over ‘ere, ye gods-damned—y. . . you—”

“Busy,” he murmurs, not really aware of anything but the sight before him, but Engrim’s shouting makes Percy turn his head, and their eyes meet, and, and.

“ _Serafen!_ ”

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Serafen shouts wildly, and it takes more than a few seconds for him to break his captain’s gaze, “Which part of ‘I’m busy’ did you have a hard time of fuckin’ understandin’?”

Ora joins their civilized conversation from somewhere behind Engrim, “The fuck you lyin’ to us for? Lookin’ at our cap’n all day long with nothin’—”

“Listen to me, _you pig-faced crap sa_ —”

"Oh but look at how the rock-brained beaten dog ta—"

“Enough of this!” Pallegina shouts, and everybody stills, even the poor imps who’re trying to get loose of Edér’s grip.

“Fuckin’ worthless piece o’ sno—”

“ _Serafen_.”

The thing is. . . Serafen normally doesn’t care. And most of the time he has a hard time understanding, even though it’s easy to slip past the barriers of one’s mind and _look_ but. Ah, whatever, he’s drunk and horny and Pallegina’s already dragging him by the ear to the baths so he supposes it doesn’t matter much anyway.

**iii**.

His captain finds him, which is a change, but he tries not to show any reaction, even though it’s all futile thanks to his treacherous ears, twitching left and right like they have a mind of their own.

His captain’s ears are prettier, he realizes; they’re shorter, leaner, less furry, and they’re just. . . that. _Pretty_. Like the rest of him.

“Ahoy, captain!” He greets Percy as he winks, and bows while looking at him, because he doesn’t want to miss the slight smile.

“Serafen,” Percy says, and his voice is pretty, too, so pretty that with enough persuasion Serafen knows that he could be a devoted follower of fuckin’ _Wael_. All priests should be like him, he thinks, beautiful enough to discard any suspicion you might have of a deity. “The winds are calm, today.”

“So they are.”

“I’ve been wishing for good weather,” Percy continues, still looking at Serafen with this weird look in his eye, but Serafen’s already used to this. When you talk to Percy there’s no certainty, only doubts, and half-assed guesses. Some of the other priests of Wael do this, too, but they do it because they want to be like the deity they follow, and they do it in such a pretentious way that it makes Serafen’s skin itch.

With Percy, it feels natural. Like everything’s a mystery and you just can’t get enough of it.

And Percy’s different. He thinks himself above others, above _Wael_ themselves, for fuck’s sake.

(And _gods above_ , Serafen agrees.)

Percy stands a little closer to him than before, now, and Serafen has to remember how to breathe before he heels over right into Ondra’s clutches.

He doesn’t know why he does it again, but it feels like his brain disconnects with him, and he finds himself raising a palm, to rest on the small of Percy’s back. And his captain flinches, again, but _tries_ to relax as he trembles, like he wants Serafen's touch to linger so bad that it's the reason why it happens. Serafen doesn’t stop there, though, and maybe he should’ve, but he doesn’t. He lets his hand wander a bit lower, until he rests it on his captain’s hip, pulls him closer like he does to lads and lasses he spends time with on shore leave. Percy’s trembling and smirking, and he’s not even looking at him, and Serafen thinks that maybe, he should’ve not done this, not this soon. But his desire for Percy surprises even himself because at first he only thought about how pretty Percy would look with his legs spread under him, or how pretty he'd sound if he fucked him but _now_ , now he's thinking about turning his head to his side and inhaling until all of him is surrounded by his captain.

And then he realizes that not only is he thinking like a man who’s readying himself for commitment, he's thinking like he's, gods fucking forbid, _in love._ He thinks, to nobody’s astonishment, _oh fuck_.

Commitment, he thinks, is the one thing that seems impossible for somebody like him.

But as he trembles, too, alongside his captain, he thinks, _maybe_. Maybe.

"Cap—"

His captain withdraws. Serafen watches, dumbfounded. 

"You know me as the Captain of the Defiant and the Watcher of Caed Nua," Percy says.

Serafen doesn't really know how to respond to that, but says, "Yes?"

Percy's eyes narrow, and it's such a sexy look on him, but Serafen tries to focus. His captain says as he withdraws even further away from him, "You know nothing more."

It doesn't feel like a question, more like a statement of some sort. "I'd like to," he says, but his voice comes out a little funny, so he clears his throat and tries again, "I'd like to know more. About you, that is. Captain."

Percy's lip twitches and that's when he realizes that he'll walk away, and Serafen doesn't want him to, he wants him to stay so much that all of his body feels like it's burning, like Magran herself started a fire inside him so big that it threatens to consume him altogether. For gods' sake. _He_ is the one who leaves people behind. He's the one who's the reason of this yearning, craving. He starts to _babble_ , "Oh for—I mean. I know that you're meant to be secretive or whatever the fuck you're supposed to be, I mean, we've been sailin' together for some time now and I still have no idea who the hell you are and, and, you have to understand, captain, I don't— _fuck_. Listen, I'm a broken man, I've been survivin' for this long just by hornswogglin' for fuck's sake, and _you know me_ , Captain. Well, you _don't_ but I don't lie to you. I've never manipulated you. I never will." 

Percy's staring at him, face stoic, but eyes a little wider than normal but he's not leaving, _he's not leaving_.

"Your eyes are beautiful."

"Serafen," Percy says. "What—"

"Captain, every inch of you, _every inch_ , is so fuckin' beautiful that every time I look at you it feels like I'm gettin' a floggin' by me ol' seadog."

Then, silence. 

Percy's still looking at him, and his ears are twitching, and it'd be a damn adorable sight if he wasn't so trembling.

"When you, uh," _he really should shut up and lea—_ "When you tremble, does touchin' make it worse? Does—"

His captain shakes his head and that's all the encouragement Serafen needs.

He takes him in his arms, gently at first, but then everything comes down crashing on top of him and the fire inside of him burns even brighter, deeper, and he all but squeezes Percy until his ears are tucked against his chest, until he trembles even more furiously, and Serafen inhales, and touches and smiles when he realizes that yes, his captain smells beautiful and yes, his hair is soft to the touch. 

Percy exhales, and his trembling stops.

"My beautiful captain," Serafen says, and he is still a bit bewildered because he wanted to touch his captain, wanted to call him beautiful but never imagined that he could and he's doing it all _right now_. "What happened to you?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Percy says, laughing slightly, and it's a bitter thing, but it's also the most honest Serafen has ever heard him be. "I became a keeper of secrets just because I didn't want to talk about it."

Serafen thinks of little scars, big ones, too, and deep ones. Thinks of scars that are blue, red, white; shameful but never hidden. He nods, and puts his forehead on his captain's temple, and thinks, _I'm so fucked_.


End file.
